William R. Smith
William R. Smith was born on 2 October 1853 at Johnstown, in the Cambria County mountains, the eldest son of William C. Smith and Harriet Roberts. The 1870 census has him at seventeen in his father's house in the first ward of the town, with four younger brothers and a girl boarding with them; by 1880 his father had taken the family out to a farm at Jackson Township, but William was gone by then.
He had married Alma. The 1880 census catches the two of them a year in, both twenty-six, boarding at Blairsville in Indiana County under the roof of a Margaret Scott, and Blairsville is where he was eventually buried, so it seems to have been her town or his and not just a lodging. Their four children came through the 1880s: Charles, Bertro Harrington, Wilma, and Ina.
By 1900 the family was at Aspinwall, a small borough on the Allegheny above Pittsburgh, and the same enumeration district held the orphaned Alan Clyde McCowan in his sister's house. Four years later Alan married Wilma. The Smiths stayed on at Aspinwall through the censuses of 1910 and 1920, the children leaving one by one until only Ina was at home.
He retired, and he went south. He died at Lakeland in Polk County, Florida on 20 January 1929, seventy-five years three months and eighteen days old, and was carried back to Blairsville and buried there on the twenty-sixth. That Florida certificate is the document that names his parents, eight hundred miles from where he was born.
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Cite: Heirology, "William R. Smith (1853-1929)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/william-r-smith-1853-1929-a5c75c.